Chapter 18 Highways and Time

“Alright! I do have some thoughts.” Kenji Hagiwara observed her reaction, his violet-blue eyes flickering slightly, but he asked seriously, “Do you remember how you told me about your experience of being captured by the game yesterday?”

"I remember!" Feng Xingshou was a little confused by his question: "What about my experience?"

"After you were captured by the game, you didn't know how to drive, so you didn't drive a single step before entering the dungeon," Kenji Hagiwara reminded her, trying to guide her to think about some questions about the game and experience the sense of accomplishment and joy of making an important discovery.

Feng Xingshou didn't appreciate his 'good intentions' and even corrected him seriously: "It's not that we didn't move at all, but that we took a step and then crashed into the thick fog barrier on the side. If you count carefully, it should be more than a meter away!"

"Pfft!" Seeing how serious she was, Kenji Hagiwara couldn't help but laugh again. He found that even when he was in the most desperate and sad situation, Kaze-chan had a magical power that made him laugh from the bottom of his heart!

As he thought about it, he suppressed the urge to burst out laughing and continued to remind her, "Okay! Even if it's two meters ahead, compared to the distance of yesterday and today, that distance is insignificant. Think about the distance of the past two days and the dungeons of the past two days, and you'll notice some of the differences."

"What's the difference?" Feng Xing Shou asked eagerly upon hearing his words, her face full of curiosity, completely unaware that he was guiding her to think and deduce the answer herself.

Seeing her curious expression, yet unwilling to speculate herself, Kenji Hagiwara could only helplessly reveal his discovery: "Yesterday you started two meters, and the daily instance time was 2007."

After I started driving, I maintained a speed of about 60 to 80 kilometers per hour. Excluding the time I spent getting out of the car to open treasure chests and rest, I drove about 700 kilometers from yesterday until noon today before entering the dungeon.

Over 700 kilometers, and exactly seven years later, I entered the dungeon again, this time in 2014. Don't you think that's too much of a coincidence? So I speculate that there might be some correlation between the time spent in daily dungeons and the driving distance by road.

"...Was your brain touched by a deity before you were reincarnated?" How can you deduce these things after only participating in one instance and driving for less than 10 hours!

Feng Xingshou clearly felt that his intelligence was on a completely different level from this person's. He thought to himself, "No wonder this person can become a police officer! This is what they call intellectual superiority!" -_-||

"Heh... I'm glad to hear you praise me like that, but why do you always think about my reincarnation?" Kenji Hagiwara teased her deliberately, "No matter what, I can't possibly know what happened before I was reincarnated!"

"Ahem!" Feng Xing Shou felt that the way the other person spoke and behaved after returning from the dungeon was strange, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong, so he could only try to ignore the things that made him feel awkward.

He forced himself to remain calm and composed, adopting the demeanor of a mature adult, and said, "In short, I understand what you mean. You speculate that each section of the route we've traveled in the past might be linked to a previous instance on Earth."

So if we just reverse and go back, we might encounter a daily quest from 3 years ago, and then you can try to save your friend Matsuda Jinpei back then, right?

“That’s right, Feng-chan is amazing too! You understood and believed my speculation so quickly, even though what I said was so incredible!” Kenji Hagiwara praised her and then added, “However, it’s just a simple matter of reversing back.”

Trying to arrive just before the last text message Xiaozhenping sent me on November 7, 2011, to save someone is practically...

It's a unique bet on the total number of hours, minutes, and seconds that could be 365 days or a year.

I think it's best to calculate based on the distance I traveled after driving the vehicle, the time it took me to be taken out of the instance by you, and the time Xiaozhenping sent this last text message.

"Check the time difference between the two, roughly calculate a ratio, and then try to access the time before Xiao Zhenping sent the text message. This might allow us to more accurately pinpoint the time before Xiao Zhenping's accident and find a way to help him through this difficult time."

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"Eh!!!" Feng Xing Shou revealed a small eye, looking a bit self-conscious and somewhat resigned, and said, "It sounds like we have to use a very complicated calculation method to find the correct distance!"

"Don't bother telling me such complicated things. I dropped out of high school after failing the entrance exam and started working. I don't understand any math beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I wouldn't understand anyway. Just get to your calculations!"

"Is it okay? If we drive back, will we have enough fuel? I checked the car's fuel tank and it's about 50 liters. We only added 30 liters yesterday and today, and it's still about half full."

"And food! We found all the treasure chests we found along the way. It would be terrible if we didn't have any more treasure chests to replenish our supplies when we got back!" Kenji Hagiwara thought about how they had eaten four packs of Golden Broth Beef Instant Noodles and several eggs for breakfast that morning, plus the rice balls and bread from last night and dinner tonight.

The wooden treasure chests drop very little food. I had bad luck in today's dungeon, and I ended up in a drunkard's house. I didn't find any food supplies, and going back to open them will likely lead to a shortage of supplies.

"It should be fine! I feel like I've already stored up quite a bit of food, and the same goes for fuel. It took about 10 hours to get here, and the return trip is just about the same distance!" Hearing this, Feng Xing Shou felt that the amount of supplies he had collected should be sufficient.

But she wasn't entirely confident in her rough estimate, so she simply checked her backpack and counted the items inside: "Let me see, after deducting the food and fuel we consumed yesterday and today."

There's one pack of instant noodles, one pack of 10 three-ingredient steamed buns, three boxes of self-heating spicy hot pot, one box of five Sichuan peppercorn chicken legs, one box of 10 packs of snail rice noodles, strawberries, and one family bucket left...

Besides the in-game food I got from opening these boxes, I also found a box of eggs with about a dozen left in yesterday's dungeon, and a 5-kilogram bag of rice that had already been opened and probably had more than 3 kilograms left.

The flour comes in a 2.5 kg bag and hasn't been opened yet. We have a stove and a pot, so we can process these ourselves. The rest are fruits, vegetables, and meat, which are raw, and we'll have to cook those ourselves.

Drinking water is probably the least of our worries, and we also have beverages, instant coffee, and tea. With all of these, we can easily last a week, let alone a day. As for fuel, we have a 50-liter can of diesel and a 100-liter can of gasoline, which is enough to last until tomorrow.

As for tomorrow and beyond, with your driving skills, even if you don't find the highway treasure chest all day, you can still get it through the dungeon racing game and claim the fuel reward inside.

"That's good!" Hearing Feng Xingshou reveal the quantity of important supplies she had without reservation, Hagiwara Kenji looked into her candid eyes, her image deeply reflected in his own.

His face remained as calm as usual, and he said to her in a slightly frivolous yet joking manner, "Sorry, it seems I'll have to put you on a risk with me."

"No need to apologize for such a small thing! It wasn't like I risked my life." Feng Xingshou was the one who was truly grateful: "If you hadn't driven for me in the race, I don't know what would have happened to me!"

It might be able to keep resurrecting itself through the ability of reincarnation, but without driving, it can't move forward. It will most likely be trapped between the racetrack and the instance until it can no longer use this resurrection ability!

But when she thought about what happened back then, those hurtful comments on the screen after her death involuntarily came to mind. She didn't want to think about the unpleasant things that happened back then, so she quickly changed the subject: "But after the upgrade at noon, the vehicle speed changed. Will it affect your calculation of the ratio of daily dungeon time to travel distance?"

.

"No! Just make sure you stay on the right speed and travel the expected distance." Kenji Hagiwara glanced at his phone, which had very little battery left, and turned it off to save power. He continued, "But be careful of the strange thing tonight!"

"Huh? Why?" Feng Xingshou looked at Hagiwara, puzzled.

After learning about her educational level and lack of deduction skills, Kenji Hagiwara explained her confusion in detail: "Heh... I just thought that since the journey on this highway might be related to the era in which the daily dungeon is set."

The announcement also stated that the initial vehicle could only defend against nighttime attacks in the second season at most, which means that the nighttime monster-hunting 'dungeons' would also change depending on the distance traveled.

Following the typical gameplay pattern of games, the further away from the starting village, the stronger the monsters, and the better the rewards. Could we also infer that the further we travel from the starting point, the better the rewards and the stronger the monsters?

"I hadn't thought about this at all before, cough cough... but I think what you said makes a lot of sense." -_-|| At this moment, Feng Xingshou felt what it meant to be intellectually crushed; she clearly knew all of this.

Hagiwara had never hidden anything from her about his service weapon, the remaining bullets, or the monster incident last night, but she had never considered these possibilities. This made her sigh again, no wonder he could become a police officer at such a young age, and even other middle-aged Japanese police officers were his subordinates!

You can't argue with his intelligence, haha~ But even if I'm not as smart as him, my luck is much better than his, even if I can just casually pull someone in like this. (*^▽^*) Thinking of this, she smiled happily again.

Watching her alternate between expressions of self-deprecation and smug smiles, Kenji Hagiwara thought to himself, "Kaze-chan may appear composed on the surface, but she's probably quite lively inside. She's a really interesting woman. I wonder what she's thinking right now and what's making her laugh?"

Wasn't she afraid of the topic we just discussed? She seemed confident about the topic of monsters. Although he guessed that she might also have the confidence and assurance to deal with monsters, he still didn't ask her.

Instead, he continued, "I happened to bring my sidearm with me. After deducting the rounds used last night, I still have nine rounds left. If there are still six monsters tonight, there shouldn't be any problems. But you can't open the car doors or windows without permission!"

"I know." She wasn't the type to do anything reckless, and she knew she had to stay in the car obediently. She was just curious about what it was like to use firearms.

Seeing that she had agreed, Kenji Hagiwara focused his attention on waiting for tonight's 'dungeon monster'. However, as he waited, he began to feel uneasy, wondering if his previous predictions were correct. Would tonight's monster really be stronger than yesterday's?

If he guessed wrong, and was being looked at with such admiration by Feng Jiang while guessing wrong, he felt incredibly embarrassed! Making a fool of himself in front of Xiao Jinping and the others wouldn't be a problem, but with Feng Jiang, it was a different story. He really enjoyed Feng Jiang's admiring gaze every time he looked at him...